


The Deal

by FlutterFyre



Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Best Friends, Car Accident, Gen, Graphic Descriptions of Injuries, Major Character Injury, Making Deals at Crossroads, anything, not an angel
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-12-14
Updated: 2013-12-14
Packaged: 2018-01-04 14:05:40
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,738
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1081900
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/FlutterFyre/pseuds/FlutterFyre
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Faced with the unacceptable, Stiles makes a deal.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Deal

**Author's Note:**

> WARNING: This tale contains graphic descriptions of injuries. If this is a trigger for you, please do not read!
> 
> Many thanks and kind regards to BootsnBlossoms and my housemate for their cheerleading when this idea bit me and would not let go. Sorry, not sorry for the end result.

The sudden thunderous _BANG_ was followed in quick succession by the howl of rending metal, the shriek of rubber on asphalt and the peal of glass shattering. The combined cacophony was all but deafening as his world flipped over and over again, ending with Stiles looking through his destroyed windshield at the incongruous sight of his hood kissing the road as he hung upside down, his seat belt tight across his lap. 

Releasing the white-knuckled grip he had on the Jeep’s steering wheel, Stiles shook his head to clear it and try to right the world. He promptly fought an almost overwhelming urge to throw up as it seemed like sharp spikes were being pounded into his skull. Forcing himself to swallow the bile against gravity, he curled forward, pressing his face into trembling hands. A whimper escaped as even those small movements sent almost electric shocks of pain arcing out from his left shoulder. 

“Fu—”

Leaning back against the seat once more, his hands were shaking uncontrollably and smeared with something dark and slightly sticky that he thought might be blood. He touched the tip of one finger to his tongue and tasted the tang of salt and metal. Yep, blood. He gingerly swiped his hand across his forehead and it came away wet. No wonder his head was killing him. 

Glacially his brain came back online, struggling through the pain screaming from what felt like every cell in his body, and he remembered the minutes before his world literally turned on its head. He and Scott had been on their way to pick up Isaac before meeting the rest of the pack at Lydia’s. It was just over a week before the end of summer/start of another school year and everyone was finally back in Beacon Hills. Lydia had spent the summer in Europe, while Allison had just returned from a trip to New York City and Boston to visit family back East. Scott had spent the obligatory month with his father and Isaac had gone for a trial visit with his paternal grandmother in Southern California that, from all accounts, had not gone well. 

In short, it had been a rather lonely three months for Stiles, what with Derek still MIA. The prospect of spending an evening surrounded by pack once more had appealed on a visceral level he had previously thought reserved for the werewolf members. He had felt so very isolated and alone throughout most of the summer. If it hadn’t been for his training sessions with Dr. Deaton, Stiles was fairly certain he would have been climbing the walls. As opposed to hanging from the roof as was his current predicament. 

“Hey Scott, did you get the number of the truck that hit us?” He groaned as he finally realized the truth behind a joke that had fallen flatter than most. _His Jeep was upside down._ “Shit, there really was a truck, wasn’t there?”

Silence.

“Scott ?” He turned to look at the empty passenger seat, gasping at the pain radiating sharply from his left shoulder. He’d seriously messed something up there. When he could catch his breath, he called out, “Hey Scott? Where are you, dude? I could seriously use a hand here.”

No response. 

In fact, the night was almost abnormally silent aside from a slight hissing coming from the front of his Jeep. While the ominous sound was most probably a damaged radiator – was there any part of his Jeep that wasn’t damaged? _His car!_ He grimaced. There was no way it wasn’t totaled. Dad was going to be pissed. 

Only just cognizant enough to realize he needed to get out of the Jeep and call 9-1-1 on the off chance that there was a fuel leak, Stiles sniffed but couldn’t smell anything that might be explosive. Then again, he wasn’t at all certain he could trust his senses for much of anything at the moment and he didn’t exactly have a werewolf’s nose to begin with. Regardless, he needed to call for help. While Scott may have super werewolf healing powers, Stiles definitely needed an ambulance. He must have hit his head pretty hard, given how long it had taken him to realize his Jeep had flipped. Given his somewhat notorious poor luck, he probably had a concussion. On the other hand, Scott should probably get out of there soon-ish to avoid a hospital trip that would result in more questions than either of them cared to deal with. Speaking of, where the fuck was Scott?

“Yo, Scott! You’d better have gone for help!”

Fighting against rising panic and nearly crippling pain, Stiles fumbled wrong-handed to release his seat belt, bracing himself against the additional pain that would undoubtedly result from being dropped, even if only a few inches. He tried to defy gravity by bracing his feet against the floor boards and pushing his body painfully into the back of the seat. It sort of worked, for a moment anyway, and he was able to use his good arm to twist and maneuver so that he mostly landed with his back against the crumpled remains of his Jeep’s roof.

In a move that was somehow a cross between an inchworm and beached whale, Stiles scooted across the car on his back, to the opening left by the missing passenger door. He counted himself lucky it was gone as the driver’s side had sustained the initial impact and was massively crumpled inwards. It would take either werewolf strength or the Jaws of Life to get through it and Stiles had neither. What that missing door might mean for his best friend, Stiles really didn’t want to think about.

Somehow, using just his one good hand and arm, he managed to haul himself out of the Jeep, though he was still pretty much flat on his back, staring up at the waxing moon as it rose over the trees. Pea-sized pieces of shattered auto glass littered the pavement and dug into his ass and back as he inched away from the ruin that used to be his baby. The additional pain slowed him down but he didn’t stop; he needed to find Scott. Carefully he rolled on to his right side and laid there a moment, panting, trying to convince his pain-wracked body to just _move_.

Patting his pants pocket in a fruitless effort to locate his cell, he seemed to remember dropping it in his lap after Scott climbed in. God only knew where it was now. Stiles slowly maneuvered so that he was mostly balanced on his knees before bracing his good hand on the ground and lurching gracelessly to his feet. Dazed, he looked about. His Jeep was some distance from the intersection they had been crossing when broadsided; the full-size pick-up that had hit them sat half in cross roads, headlamps gone. It was too dark to see anyone moving in or around it, so Stiles continued his search for Scott.

A dark shadow was lying on the edge of the road, about midway between the two vehicles.

“What the—?” If that was Scott, why wasn’t he moving? “Scott?” he called again, to no response.

Cradling his damaged left arm against his stomach and trying to not jostle his shoulder, Stiles stumbled over to find his best friend lying unmoving. Scott’s head was twisted at a painful-looking angle to the rest of his body and he was covered in blood. There was so much blood everywhere, pooled around smashed and twisted limbs. It continued to drip slowly from the side of Scott’s chest where a bloody sliver of bone had torn through flesh.

A buzzing grew in his ears and darkness edged his vision and Stiles wasn’t sure if he was going be sick or faint dead away; he had never been particularly good with blood. He pulled himself together through sheer force of will. He needed to keep it together for Scott’s sake.

“No!”

Stiles’ legs gave out and he collapsed beside his best friend, barely feeling the jolt of his knees hitting the pavement. He reached out to brush the fingertips of his still good right hand along the torn and bloody side of Scott’s face before pressing gently against the side of Scott’s neck.

Nothing.

“No, no, no, Scott, you can’t die! Don’t be dead, Scott, please, please, please, don’t be dead.” Stiles knew he was babbling but he didn’t give a damn. Surely there was a chance. Ignoring the blood that continued to flow – albeit sluggishly – down the side of his face at the edge of his hairline, Stiles grabbed Scott’s shoulders and shook him as he begged. 

“Damn it, Scott. You’re a werewolf, activate those super human werewolf healing abilities and wake up!”

Scott didn’t move, didn’t so much as twitch. No breaths stirred his chest. He was gone. 

Somehow he had died too quickly for even his accelerated healing abilities to save him. 

“No! No, please, no! I’ll do anything – anything – just don’t let Scott die…” What had started as screams of denial was quickly reduced to a heart-breaking, whimpering sob.

“Anything?” A soft and low female voice spoke from behind him, startling him.

Tears streaming down his cheeks, Stiles looked over his shoulder to see a petite, almost frail looking, stereotypical, little, old lady standing immediately past his right shoulder. He swiped the backs of his hands over his face, smudging the tear tracks.

“What? Who are you?”

Ignoring his question, she pressed, “You said ‘anything’. Did you mean it?”

“Yes. Yes, anything – but it’s too late.” Stiles waved his hand at Scott’s…body… and swallowed past the lump in his throat. “He’s dead.”

Her mouth curved into a smile that was a touch too cold, edges a bit too sharp, to be construed as comforting. “While he may be dead, it’s hardly too late. I _can_ bring him back however, there is a price…”

“Bring him back?” Stiles sniffed, gulping back the sob of hope that rose at her words. “What are you? Some sort of angel or something?” The part of his brain that once might have huffed in disbelief had seen so much – what with werewolves and a kanima, druids and darachs, witches and magick. A real, live angel was hardly the least believable thing he could imagine.

“An angel? You think _I’m_ an angel?” She seemed to cackle with derision at the supposition. “My dear boy, I’m _no_ angel.”

“How else could you possibly do what you say you can?” Stiles clenched his jaw and lifted his chin as he met her gaze defiantly.

The icy smile hadn’t left her face. As Stiles watched, she slowly blinked and as her eyes reopened, the streetlights played some seriously fucked up tricks on Stiles’ vision as it seems as both of her eyes looked like onyx marbles – both the sclerae and irises appear to have transformed to an almost luminescent black. It had to be his imagination. Or possibly a side effect of the concussion that he was sure he had. She blinked again and her eyes were normal once more.

After a moment’s stunned amazement, Stiles realized she was speaking and refocused on what she was saying.

“…about as far from an angel as you’re likely to find. However that does nothing to alter my ability to return young friend – as I said, for a price…” She stared at Stiles with an intensity he found unnerving and more than a little creepy.

Stiles drew a deep breath, steeling himself for what was coming. He had a feeling he wasn’t going to like the answer to his next question, but he was going to ask it anyway. “What sort of price?”

He was absurdly proud that his voice stayed steady.

“Oh, don’t worry I’m not going to ask for anything so cliché as your soul—”

Shoulders drooping in relief, Stiles barely contained a sigh of relief at this news.

“—no, what I want from you is your body.”

“Oh. My. God. What?” He couldn’t possibly have heard that correctly. “You have _got_ to be kidding me! What on earth can you want with _this_?” Stiles waves his hand, indicating the entirety of his pale, skinny, and terribly uncoordinated late adolescent body. “On second thought, don’t answer that. My dad’s the sheriff, you know,” he warned.

“Oh, I know. However, he won’t even know I am there.”

“Wha—? Just a minute…he won’t know you’re where?” Stiles was having an increasingly difficult time processing what was being said. Maybe all of it – everything – was just an injury-induced hallucination.

“In your body. Possessing you. You want your friend back and I want a younger host – this body is slow and weak.” Her thin lips curled in obvious disgust.

Dumbfounded, Stiles stared at the strange little woman who had clearly lost her mind.

~~~~~

Stiles watched as Scott loped into the night, so as to not be anywhere around when the police and, more importantly, Stiles’ dad arrived. It was hard to believe that not even ten minutes had passed since the accident. So much had happened in that brief time. So much had changed. And he still didn’t know the condition of the driver who had hit them, though the lack of any movement or sound from the truck was telling.

At the edge of the shadows, Scott stopped and turned to smile and wave at Stiles before he disappeared into the darkness. It felt an awful lot like goodbye.

With a full body shake that caused the stabbing pain to flare again in his shoulder, Stiles shoved that thought aside. Tragedy had been averted tonight. Scott was alive and safe and that was all that mattered, right? So maybe Stiles had made a deal with a devil to ensure that, but at least it wasn’t _THE DEVIL_. Besides, it wasn’t going to cost him his soul, just the temporary use of his body. The creature had even agreed to put forth enough effort at school so that Stiles would not be forced to repeat a year once everything was said and done.

Stiles knew full well that anything that sounded too good to be true almost always was – that was just the way his life worked. Even so, clinging to the fantasy the – whatever she was – had fed him was the only way he could hope to get through this. He’d say that people couldn’t be possessed, but the dead had just risen – clearly anything was possible. So he had decided to just go through with this and hope and pray a way out could be found. Especially if this...thing...decided to renege on its promise that the possession was temporary – to last no longer than a year and a day.

Besides, watching Scott draw breath again; watching his eyes flutter open, initially so dazed and confused to be lying in the middle of the road and then so thrilled with the resilience granted by his werewolfiness had been worth anything. Stiles had been so damn scared he’d never see his best friend smile again.

He turned to the not-an-angel. Not an angel. Huh, maybe it was a demon? That actually felt pretty damn accurate.

“Scott’s really gonna be okay?” Stiles knew he was repeating the question, but if he was actually going to go through with this, he needed to be certain it would all be worth it.

“Yessss,” the demon hissed. _Hissed. Da-yam._

Staring into the expressionless black eyes, eerily set in an elderly grandmother’s face, Stiles gave a single jerky nod. 

“All right then.” He took a deep breath and held it for a moment before blowing it out; it might be that last one that was truly his for a while. “A deal’s a deal. Let’s do this.”

She – it – smiled and if the smile seemed more toothy than that of a normal human, well that was probably just his imagination. After all, once the demon left that body for his, she’d just be someone’s grandmother again, wouldn’t she?

In the distance Stiles could hear the sound of sirens approaching.

“Open wide!” The head covered in surprisingly white hair tipped back at a ridiculous angle, jaw opening further than Stiles thought was humanly possible. A dense plume of black smoke erupted from her mouth, shooting more than ten feet into the sky before executing an abrupt U-turn and racing back towards Stiles.

~fin~

**Author's Note:**

> I welcome podficcing of any of my stories with a request to let me know so I may squee over your efforts and a caveat that the work be linked back to my posted work. Many thanks and kind regards.


End file.
